Victorious Kickstarter

Rose City Comic Con: After-Action Report

My lovely wife and I went to the Rose City Comic Con this past weekend in verdant Tyler, Texas. As a guest, I was able to get a table to set up various wares, and we finally had Victorious books to sell! The weekend was pretty packed, so I’ll just give you a brief run-down of the events below.

We arrived on Friday and although the con didn’t start until Saturday there was a VIP dinner we attended at Coach’s & Cowboy’s. We had a great dinner (burger with bacon and eggs on it! for me, popcorn shrimp for Liz) and visited with James M. Ward, formerly of TSR and creator of the Metamorphosis Alpha and Gamma World RPGs. Jim was gracious as always, and it was a great start to the convention.

Saturday saw us staggering around at 7:30am to get things set up and ready for the attendees. Liz did an awesome job on the table, and we had not only a professional banner, but also a four-tier display rack, business cards for both Victorious and the Save or Die Podcast, T-shirts, tote bags, and copies of the Capes & Clockwork Volume 2 Steampunk Superhero anthology where I had a story published.

At 10am Jim Ward and I did a seminar on Game Design, where Jim had FAR more experience than I did! I did provide some suggestions to the audience however, especially the value of patience and having a realistic mindset when trying to get published. We even touched on Kickstarters, art & layout, and the creation of prototype games for actual display.

After the seminar broke up we manned the table until 1:30, when the Victorious booth was transformed into the gaming area for the Victorious RPG demo game. I’d like to thank Joe Grant (“Leftenant Victory”), Jim Amos “English Jack”, and Eric Nivens “Krane the Hunter” as they battled the maddened victims of the Jackal formula. They jackals had ravaged the outlying annex of St. Mary’s Hospital, and the three heroes did their best to stop the carnage and rescue the survivors. They succeeded, even after running into a surprise in the darkened hallways that nearly spelled their doom!

Sunday saw us once again holding down the table and selling out of the Victorious rulebooks by 1pm ! This was just in time for the second demo game. In this scenario our heroes (Heather Roberts as “The Huntress “, Chris Roberts as “leftenant Victory”, Adam as “Krane the Hunter”, and Joe Grant as “Frostbite.”) coming to the rescue as foul sewer crabs of surprising size broke out of subterranean London to try to drag innocents into the darkness. They battled the smaller creatures, only to face a massive crab-creature that did its best to tear them apart. Alas, the auction forced the game to stop before our heroes and heroines discovered the source of these mutated monstrosities, but surely evil will not hide in the shadows forever!

We gathered our things and bid farewell to our friends at RCCC. We left the convention around 4pm, and drove the 3 hours back home.

Final Thoughts:

All in all, it was a fun convention. The facilities were a little smaller than last year, but still plenty of room for everyone and the weather was great so it was worth it. Despite its smaller size, the facilities were clean and well maintained. We look forward to Rose City Comic Con 2017 and an even larger number of Victorious games to be promoted.

The demand for Victorious games was so significant I’ll be speaking with Ground Zero Comics of Tyler to hopefully host another demo game over the Thanksgiving holidays. More details on this as I get them.

Thanks to Kevin and Dave for being themselves (?), thanks to Joe Grant for watching over the booth when we both had to leave for various and sundries. Also thanks to Jim Ward for letting us steal some chairs, and we expect Liz’s d20s back by Gary Con!